Section 3 of the Capstone Paper

3

Nokia – Technology Industry

Angela Rodriguez
University of Arizona Global Campus
MGT450: Strategic Planning for Organizations
Robin McCart
May 17, 2021

Nokia Technology Industry

Nokia started its operation as a single paper mill operation where it focused on paper products, rubber boots, tires, television, and mobile phones. Their headquarter is based at Karaportti Espoo, Finland, after relocating from the initial Nokia house, at the Gulf of Finland located in Keilaniemi. Nokia began their transition to telecommunications in the 1990s. By 1998 Nokia become the best-selling mobile phone brand with rapid success within the mobile industry. It became the most sought out and preferred supplier to produce the world digital terrestrial television set-top boxes.
The Nokia mission statement is to connect people through its phone and the internet. It tries to connect people in various ways and designing experiences to meet consumer needs. Its vision is to create, build and encourage people from all over the world to communicate with each other and create a world connecting everyone hence creating and transforming a giant planet into a small village. It helps in connecting and fulfilling people’s needs in meeting their communication experiences. The company structure consists of the chairman as the head, followed by the overall managing director and then departmental directors heading various departments such as operations, human resource management, marketing, and chief financial officer (Simonen & Svento et al., 2020).

The management and control of the corporation were divided among the shareholders at a general meeting where the leadership team was selected under the board of directors’ recommendation. The board of directors committee consisted of the personnel committee, audit committee, corporate governance, and nomination committee. The Finnish Companies Act framework manages the operations of the company. The company framework operates within the corporate governance guidelines. Nokia managed to gain brand personality and market shares because of its various designs, such as sets with rotating cameras, flip sets, and flat sets.
Its values are purposely based on achieving together, respecting, trusting, having the right mindset, and working in informal and formal networks. Engaging its customers in ensuring their needs are met and satisfied. The company’s central values are a passion for innovation that’s primarily basing its desires and dreams to connect to the future by venturing into technology innovation. It aims to work in ways to understand the world by encompassing what to offer to clients and how to do their business by impacting positive actions and behavior. The values influence the company in creating trust and developing teamwork that fosters cooperation at work (Lamberg et al., 2019).
Nokia is among the oldest companies that has continued to gain strengths within the technology and communication field with a leading experience base. It has mastered the market dynamics within the industry worldwide, given its over 100 years of existence in the market. It possesses among the most experienced and advanced personnel within the workforce. Its efficient and skilled workforce has enabled and steer its success journey. It dealing in various designs and products such as smartphones has helped build its reputation by providing quality handsets. Its solid and large distribution channel has also helped in its product distribution to various countries through the retail shops and gained trust due to its durable products.
Nokia’s opportunity for further growth of the business entails ever-growing smartphones that can be countered with developing new features or redesigning the product to meet the industry’s current trends. The company can still gain more of the high demand on smartphones and has an advantage over its strong brand image and reputation to continue venturing into the industry.
The Nokia brand faces stiff competition from various existing companies and the new emerging brand. The current competitors consisted of Motorola, Samsung, and Apple. The new entrants creating stiff competition consist of Oppo, Meizu, and Oneplus. These new entrants and the near competitors are spreading into the market fast and gaining a robust competitive edge hence acting as a significant threat to the Nokia brand. Given its strong brand and agility, it still can counter the competition around by increasing the customer experience with new products and features.
Nokia’s decline originated from rekindling Nokia’s earlier drive and morale by deciding to reallocate leadership roles and entire organization restructuring. The change in top management from Jorma Ollila to Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, where the new CEO focused more on traditional phones rather than immediately venturing into a smartphone. After realizing the declining market, Nokia opted to partner with Microsoft to produce the windows phone and abandon its long-serving operating systems partner, Symbian and MeeGo. In 2012, there was a failure in introducing windows phone following the pack of smartphones (Lamberg & Tikkanen et al., 2019)
Nokia failed to adapt to the merging new trends in software than hardware and decided to stick to its old ways and ignore the changing environment preference. Nokia missed its innovation vision and opted to shift to mass production of the phones, which lost focus on the innovation path. Other companies like Apple and Samsung took over the market. According to changing environment and trends, its failure to reposition itself did contribute to its decline and the top management’s overconfidence. Less consideration of the changes and the rising competition played many roles in its descent. Recently, they have been rumored to work on a 5g device which will make them a competitive force, especially with LG stepping out of the phone business to focus on other electronics.

Reference

Lamberg, J. A., Lubinaitė, S., Ojala, J., & Tikkanen, H. (2019). The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013.  History, 1-47.

Lamberg, J. A. (2019). Ringtone: Exploring the rise and fall of Nokia in mobile phones.

Simonen, J., Herala, J., & Svento, R. (2020). Creative destruction and creative resilience: Restructuring of the Nokia dominated high‐tech sector in the Oulu region. Regional Science Policy & Practice, 12(5), 931-953.